From The Invention Of Homeland To The Modern Nation: The Social Representation Of Modernity In 19th Century Mexico

Abstract

Strictly speaking, this text is not a history of Mexican nineteenth century. Probably it is not a work on social representations, if this last one supposes a series of theoretical and methodological interstices that sometimes appear like inevitable. In spite of both questions, the text is not totally disconnected from the conceptual and methodological frameworks that govern the disciplinary development of history and social psychology. Rather, the aim of this work is to use some part of the theoretical framework of social representations to offer a partial response to a problem that has been developing for some time in the field of Mexican social, cultural and intellectual history. In recent decades, nineteenth-century historians in Mexico, particularly those dedicated to the analysis of nineteenth-century politics, have circumscribed much of their discussions to the obvious interest of the political class in the creation of citizens. In the context of this discussion, our aim is to use the theory of Social Representation as a possibility to explain this process, arguing that the notion of modernity is inserted in the political class of the Mexican nineteenth-century mediating its anchorage with the concept of the nation, and that the impatience for the creation of citizens could be explained by assuming that in them lies the figurative nucleus.